SUPER SCRIMPING

We've survived Black Friday (or according to the other half, Black Bollocks Week) and as you know, everyone loves a bargain.  Especially me, the queen of super scrimping.  Who doesn’t love to indulge in a bit of yellow ticket spotting when trawling the aisles of the local supermarket?   You can’t beat the thrill of pouncing on a packet of further reduced cheese priced at 25 pence.  I’ve seen grown men reduced to tears in Tesco when beaten to a tray of discounted chicken fillets. 

Not just any discount but an M&S discount

With a bit of imagination, super-scrimpers can dine like kings on a budget Ebenezer Scrooge would be proud of.  Yellow ticket dinners are the perfect antidote to nouvelle cuisine where ironically you get less food for more money. We recently feasted on a delicious home-made carrot and coriander soup that started life as a 20p bag of carrots and would you believe it, I actually made butter from a reduced pot of whipping cream and an empty jam jar.  It’s insane but cheap and all fresh too. How else do you think I paid off my mortgage so early?

And the point I’m trying to make here is that super scrimping can also be applied to DIY or pretty much anything that involves spending money.  Sometimes you can just get lucky as I did a few days ago in Homebase when to my surprise I just happened to stumble across a yellow ticket timber bargain when searching for decorative mouldings that could be used as a dado rail.

Homebase bargains

These lovely Richard Burbidge lengths of pine Victorian dado rails and architrave have cost a mere £28 for all 8 lengths.  It’s a steal!  As I couldn’t decide which might look better on top of our panelling, I bought both lots.  Decisions, decisions …..

Victorian Dado Rail

Victorian Architrave